The media landscape has changed, and so has AHFA's public relations focus during the High Point, Las Vegas and Chicago home furnishings markets.
Spring Market coverage in Orlando Magazine was assembled from press kits mailed by AHFA.
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Many consumer journalists who previously covered markets in person no longer enjoy those generous travel budgets. As a result, AHFA has increased its efforts to reach out to these writers and editors with editorial materials that can help them continue producing quality coverage of our industry's new products and trends.
"Our New Product Roundup and our trend reports are still made available to journalists who attend our industry’s trade shows in person," explains AHFA Vice President of Public Relations and Marketing Jackie Hirschhaut. "But we are also emailing trend information and photography to hundreds of additional journalists who don’t travel or only rarely travel to markets."
To facilitate these efforts, AHFA requests a 100-word summary of new product introductions from each of its member companies one week prior to each market, including the April and October High Point Markets, the January and August Las Vegas Markets and the September International Casual Furnishings and Accessories Market in Chicago.
Product photography, if available in advance of the market, can be emailed along with the summary to pbowling@ahfa.us. Summaries are limited to 100 words. Photography should be at least 300 dpi from an original that is at least 5 x 7.
AHFA's public relations staff also packs boxes of market press kits for journalists who are unable to attend the market in person.
"These boxes target specific newspaper and magazine journalists we work with throughout out the year. Many of these writers and editors will produce a market trend story from the materials we supply," Hirschhaut explains. And, today, coverage in print is often repeated on the newspaper’s or magazine’s website, thereby multiplying the benefits of coverage.
"In addition, coverage in one newspaper often leads to coverage in hundreds of papers all across the country, as content-starved features editors pick up the same story in every market," she points out.
